This Reading List, a substantially expanded version of previous lists published on 11 and 15 November, has been prepared with the aim of making a wide range of readings on the subject of the integrity—or the lack of integrity—of the recent U.S. presidential election readily available. It is being published as a companion-piece to my article “The Stolen U.S. Presidential Election: A Comparative Analysis.”

I have sought to facilitate analytical use of the materials in this revised and expanded list by dividing them into five subject-sections:

1. The Openness of New Voting Technologies to Fraud;

2. Allegations and Evidence of Fraud in Recent U.S. Elections;

3. Advance Warnings of Fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election;

4. Allegations and Evidence of Fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election: The Developing Controversy.

Section 1 includes writings by computer scientists who have specialized in issues of electronic security, by statisticians who have studied questions of the detection of electoral fraud, and by journalists and activists who have assembled and critically analyzed the opinions of experts.

Section 2 provides some historical context for the present situation by offering a selection of writings in which the evidence of electoral fraud in recent U.S. elections is documented and analyzed.

Section 3 shows how insistently computer scientists, investigative journalists and activists warned during the past two years about the dangers to democracy posed by electronic voting machines which remove the possibility of electoral recounts and audits—and how, despite their warnings, the U.S. entered the 2004 presidential elections equipped with voting-machine systems most of which were demonstrably open both to back-door manipulation and to hacking at the voting tabulator level.

Section 4 lists a wide variety of different texts. These include, most obviously, reports and analyses focusing on specific aspects of the voting and its aftermath, and studies that allege (and in my opinion cumulatively demonstrate) the theft of the presidential election by the Bush-Cheney Republicans and their corporate allies. But I have made a point also of listing writings by scholars who find no compelling grounds for suspecting large-scale or systematic electoral fraud. (See, with respect to the Florida vote tallies, Mebane [8 and 12 Nov. 2004], Sekhon [14 Nov. 2004], Wand, and Strashny—and, on the other side of the debate, Dodge, Dopp, Liddle, Mitteldorf, and Hout.) I have also listed articles by journalists, often writing in mainstream outlets, who have dismissed allegations of electoral fraud as the result of over-hasty or ill-informed analysis, as an expression of conspiracy-theory paranoia, or as mere sour grapes. (See, for example, Corn, A. Freeman, Klein, Manjoo, Morano, Reid, Roig-Franzia & Keating, and Zeller. Critics of the mainstream media coverage include Friedberg, R. Parry [13 Nov. 2004], S. Parry [12 Nov. 2004], Smith and Wade.)

Section 5 seeks to facilitate comparisons between the U.S. election and recent presidential elections in Venezuela and Ukraine in which, as in the U.S., divergences between exit poll results and official vote tallies prompted charges of election-rigging

The issues are complex, at some points hotly disputed, and in urgent need of further inquiry and analysis. I would maintain, nonetheless, that the evidence points with cumulative force to the conclusion that the official vote tallies in the U.S. presidential election of November 2, 2004 (listed by The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/ref/elections2004/2004President.html ), were produced by a massive and sustained project of electoral fraud.

Michael Keefer is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph, and a past president of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. His publications include Lunar Perspectives: Field Notes from the Culture Wars (Toronto: House of Anansi Press).

1. The Openness of New Voting Technologies to Fraud

Brady, Henry E., Justin Buchler, Matt Jarvis, John McNulty. Counting All the Votes: The Performance of Voting Technology in the United States. 57 pp. Department of Political Science, Survey Research Center, and Institute of Government Studies, University of California, Berkeley (September 2001), http://www.ucdata.berkeley.edu .

Internet Policy Institute. Report of the National Workshop on Internet Voting: Issues and Research Agenda. March 2001. 62 pp. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Conducted in cooperation with the University of Maryland and hosted by the Freedom Forum. http://www.nsfe-voterprt.pdf .

Jones, Douglas W. “Problems with Voting Systems and the Applicable Standards.” Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Washington D.C (22 May 2001), http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting .

Conyers, John Jr., and Democratic Investigative Staff, House Committee on the Judiciary. How to Make Over One Million Votes Disappear: Electoral Sleight of Hand in the 2000 Presidential Election. A Fifty-State Report Prepared for Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (Ranking Member, House Committee on the Judiciary; Dean, Congressional Black Caucus. 122 pp. Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representatives, August 20, 2001. http://www.electionreport.pdf .

“Berkeley Researchers Report ‘Unexplained Discrepancy’ in FLA Vote Totals. Study released Thursday indicates the probability is that electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more in excess votes to Bush in Florida.” Buzzflash (18 November 2004), http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04028.html .

Buchanan, Wyatt. “If It’s Too Bad to be True, It May Not be Voter Fraud. Most statistical enigmas in recent election have logical explanations, despite Web rants.” San Francisco Chronicle (11 November 2004); also available at http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5239 .

——. “Odds of Bush gaining by 4 percent in all exit polling states 1 in 50,000; Evoting/paper variance not found to be significant.” The Blue Lemur (8 November 2004), http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=405 .

Conyers, John Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler (Members of the Congress of the United States, House of Representatives). “Letter to GAO Comptroller Walker Requesting Investigation of Voting Machines and Technologies Used in 2004 Election.” 5 November 2004. http://www.house.gov/conyers .

Conyers, John Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler, Robert C. Scott, Melvin Watt, Rush Holt (Members of the Congress of the United States, House of Representatives). “Follow-up Letter to GAO Comptroller Walker Requesting Investigation of Voting Machines and Technologies Used in 2004 Election.” 8 November 2004. http://www.house.gov/conyers .

Olbermann, Keith. “Did Your Vote Count? The Plot Thickens.” With Richard Engel, Jim Miklaszewski. Countdown, MSNBC (8 November 2004). Complete transcript and video stream available at Centre for Research on Globalization under the title “November 2nd: Voter Fraud and Homeland Security Terror Threat ‘Advisories’ in Ohio and Florida: Fraud on a massive scale is now corroborated by Network TV.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MNB411A.html .

Strashny, Alex. “Working Paper: The lack of effect of electronic voting machines on change in support for Bush in the 2004 Florida elections.” Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Irvine, available at Verifiedvoting.org (21 November 2004), http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5347 .

Wand, Jonathan. “Evaluating the Impact of Voting Technology on the Tabulation of Voter Preferences: The 2004 Presidential Election in Florida.” Working Paper, Version 0.2, 15 November 2004, http://wand.stanford.edu/elections/usFL2004 .

“Súmate.” [Súmate is a Venezuelan opposition group funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy to promote a campaign for a recall referendum on President Chávez; this file includes Jeremy Bigwood’s FOIA request to the CIA for information on the group.] http://www.venezuelafoia.info/NED/SUMATE/SUMATE%20index.htm .

“Press Release.” [Exit Polls in the March 2002 Election to be conducted by the Kiev Institute of Sociology, SOCIS Company, and the Social Monitoring Center, coordinated by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation.] http://www.def.org.ua/ep/en/pr .

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Center of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.